Shelf Awareness for Thursday, December 20, 2018

Quotation of the Day

Michelle Obama: 'Let's Give It Up' for Indie Booksellers

Michelle Obama at Seminary Co-op in Chicago last month.

"Let's give it up for all the independent booksellers out there for everything they do, including their support of Becoming these past few months! I hope everybody keeps supporting their neighborhood bookstore this holiday season and all year round!"

King's English Landing at Salt Lake City Airport

In the first phase, there will be 29 local and national stores, many of which are being opened in conjunction with Hudson and Paradies Lagardère, both companies that operate and manage stores in airports and other transportation centers.

Working with Paradies Lagardère, the King's English will have book selections in two stores. The TripAdvisor store will, according to Paradies Lagardère, offer travel essentials, snacks, newspapers and magazines, and health & beauty aid items as well as "feature curated book selections from one of Utah's favorite and most trusted booksellers, King's English Bookshop."

In addition, "a newly-imagined CNBC featuring a modern and bold design that heralds the next generation of Travel Essential concepts... will offer travel basics and local vendor gifts and food items. CNBC will also feature book selections from King's English Bookshop."

In some other airports, Hudson has opened branches of local independents.

The 13,000-square-foot space is on the first two floors of Fifty Liberty, a 14-story condominium tower owned by Fallon Co. that includes condos, retail and restaurants. GrubStreet's new narrative arts center will include a bookstore, café, podcast studio, classrooms, and an area for readings and storytelling events.

GrubStreet will receive a $25 per square foot construction allowance ($325,000) from Fallon to create the new space and has a $2 million grant from the Calderwood Charitable Foundation to build a "21st century narrative arts/storytelling center."

GrubStreet founder and executive director Eve Bridburg told the Globe that the organization still needs to raise "substantial funds" to help design, build, and staff the space, which she hopes will be completed by the end of 2019. "This is a substantial leap forward for us, but we feel ready and poised to do it," she said.

Part of the city's interest in having GrubStreet open in the Seaport District is "to draw a more diverse crowd to the predominantly white, wealthy neighborhood," the Globe wrote. "This helps us put a different face on Boston," said John Barros, the city's chief of economic development.

GrubStreet currently has a 3,500-square-foot office on Boylston Street in Back Bay. Started in 1997, GrubStreet has 5,000 students annually and hosts a yearly conference, Muse and the Marketplace, that features acclaimed authors, agents and editors.

New GrubStreet Center in Boston to Include Bookstore

U. of Oregon's Duck Store Dropping Trade Books

The University of Oregon's Duck Store, which has branches in Eugene, Portland and Bend, recently announced it is eliminating its trade book department, according to the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association.

The store, formerly known as the U of O Bookstore, said "changing customer expectations and ongoing pressures within the industry" have led it to "continue to reduce our selection of general-interest book titles. In 2019 we will focus our selection on a small assortment of titles with subject matter related to the University of Oregon and Pacific Northwest travel.

"We continue to believe that the university community should have access to these materials, but increasingly over the past several years other channels have become the preferred source for general-interest books."

U. of Oregon's Duck Store Dropping Trade Books

'Showrooming' Solution: Sign for the Times

The Golden Notebook, Woodstock, N.Y., has an answer for "showrooming," the habit of some bookstore customers to learn about books at bookstores and then order them online on their phones, sometimes in front of booksellers who just made the recommendation. Last weekend's experience at the Fountain Bookstore, Richmond, Va., was a timely reminder of this.

At the Golden Notebook, a sign on the front door reads, "Please inquire at counter regarding in-store photography. Thank you!" As a result, wrote co-owner James Conrad, "we have no issue approaching a customer photographing and saying 'excuse me, we do not allow in-store photography.' We then attempt a teaching conversation about how we struggle against the internet and how hard we work to find the unique and sometimes extremely hard to find types of titles that reflect our unique community and customers. Usually people are extremely apologetic and sometimes they just say nothing because we basically told them we know exactly what they were doing.

"The sign also gives people the chance to just ask at the counter first and when they say they have a blog and want to promote us or live far away and can't carry the hardcover home we say go ahead and photograph! (Just make sure to use an independent bookstore when you get home!)"

Conrad added: "Without the sign, you seem rude to mention it, but with it you can have a more polite moment to tell people the importance of small businesses and the struggles we face."

'Showrooming' Solution: Sign for the Times

Notes

Bookshop Chalkboard of the Day: The Silver Unicorn

The Silver Unicorn Bookstore, Acton, Mass., shared a photo of its sidewalk chalkboard on Facebook, noting: "Just sayin'." The sign reads: "Books are the easiest gifts to wrap! (and we'll even wrap them for you!)"

Bookshop Chalkboard of the Day: The Silver Unicorn

McLean and Eakin Booksellers 'Credits Community for Success'

McLean and Eakin Booksellers, Petoskey, Mich., "is not just a bookstore, it's a family business pursuit," the News-Review reported. The article highlighted co-owners Jessilyn and Matt Norcross, who married in 2009, bought the store from founder Julie Norcross in 2010 "and have continued bringing readers together ever since."

Community support was cited by Jessilyn Norcross as the secret to their success. "We are very lucky, the people here understand the importance of shopping locally," she said, adding that her favorite part of running a bookstore is "the kids. Walking around the store, talking to them, sitting down and reading with them. Absolutely my favorite part. The most surprising part is when people come up to me and say thank you."

McLean and Eakin Booksellers 'Credits Community for Success'

Frankfurt Book Fair New York Picks A German Officer in Occupied Paris

The Frankfurt Book Fair New York December Book of the Month is A German Officer in Occupied Paris: The War Journals, 1941-1945 by Ernst Jünger, translated by Thomas S. Hansen and Abby J. Hansen. The book will be published January 22 by Columbia University Press.

The organization wrote: "Ernst Jünger was one of 20th-century Germany's most important--and most controversial--writers. Decorated for bravery in World War I and the author of the acclaimed Western Front memoir Storm of Steel, he frankly depicted war's horrors even as he extolled its glories. As a Wehrmacht captain during World War II, Jünger faithfully kept a journal in occupied Paris and continued to write on the Eastern Front and in Germany until its defeat--writings that are of major historical and literary significance.

"Jünger's Paris journals document his Francophile excitement, romantic affairs, and fascination with botany and entomology, alongside mystical and religious ruminations and trenchant observations on the occupation and the politics of collaboration. While working as a mail censor, he led the privileged life of an officer, encountering artists such as Céline, Cocteau, Braque, and Picasso. His notes from the Caucasus depict the chaos after Stalingrad and atrocities on the Eastern Front. Upon returning to Paris, Jünger observed the French Resistance and was close to the German military conspirators who plotted to assassinate Hitler in 1944. After fleeing France, he reunited with his family as Germany's capitulation approached. Both participant and commentator, close to the horrors of history but often distancing himself from them, Jünger turned his life and experiences into a work of art. These wartime journals appear here in English for the first time, giving fresh insights into the quandaries of the 20th century from the keen pen of a paradoxical observer."

Media Heat: Caroline Hulse on Here & Now

This Weekend on Book TV: The Well-Read Black Girl Festival

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 this weekend from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, December 2210:54 a.m. Anne Farris Rosen, author of Deep South Dispatch: Memoir of a Civil Rights Journalist (University Press of Mississippi, $28, 9781496816740), at the National Press Club's Book Fair.

10 p.m. DeRay Mckesson, author of On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope (Viking, $25, 9780525560326). (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m. and Monday at 12 p.m. and 3 a.m.)

Sunday, December 239:20 a.m. Ralph Nader, co-author of To the Ramparts: How Bush and Obama Paved the Way for the Trump Presidency, and Why It Isn't Too Late to Reverse Course (Seven Stories Press, $26.95, 9781609808471), at the National Press Club's Book Fair.

3:46 p.m. Michael Sokolove, author of The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino: A Story of Corruption, Scandal, and the Big Business of College Basketball (Penguin Press, $27, 9780399563270).

This Weekend on Book TV: The Well-Read Black Girl Festival

Books & Authors

Awards: Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry

Simon Armitage will receive the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, which is awarded to a published poet from the U.K. or the Commonwealth "for excellence in poetry, on the basis either of a body of work over several years, or for an outstanding poetry collection issued during the year of the award." He will be presented with the medal by Queen Elizabeth II in 2019.

Summing up the committee's choice, poet laureate Dame Carol Ann Duffy wrote: "From the beginning Simon Armitage was an original writer and a boundary-breaking poet. He spun poems of emotional weight and musical grace from the fabric of our everyday lives: the high street and suburbia, classrooms and tearooms, the pillion seat on a motorcycle. He touched the matter of our lives with characters and subject matter that lived among us: teachers and council tenants, chip shops and television shows, figures who drank in the local pub and shopped in the nearby supermarket.

"But the poems of Simon Armitage were always idealists too, equally at home in fictive, surrealist or utopic worlds as they were in his native Huddersfield town centre. With wit and charm, they would challenge hypocrisy wherever they encountered it, giving voice to those rarely admitted into poetry, and extending an arm around the unheard and the dispossessed. And for all the attention to the grain and trouble of daily lives, the poems never lost sight of wider horizons: our outer space full of possibilities, the dream space of our love."

Awards: Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry

Attainment: New Titles Out Soon

December 24:Dog Man: Brawl of the Wild by Dav Pilkey (Graphix/Scholastic, $9.99, 9781338236576) is the sixth book in the series about a part-dog, part-man crime fighter.

Love for Imperfect Things: How to Accept Yourself in a World Striving for Perfection by Haemin Sunim and Lisk Feng (Penguin, $24, 9780143132288) advocates self-acceptance with a Buddhist bent.

The Bloated Belly Whisperer: See Results Within a Week and Tame Digestive Distress Once and for All by Tamara Duker Freuman (St. Martin's Press, $28.99, 9781250195234) expands on stomach bloating.

The DASH Diet Mediterranean Solution: The Best Eating Plan to Control Your Weight and Improve Your Health for Life by Marla Heller (Grand Central Life & Style, $26, 9781538715253) outlines a diet.

December 26:Watching You: A Novel by Lisa Jewell (Atria, $26, 9781501190070) finds multiple suspects for a shocking murder in a rich British neighborhood.

December 31:The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm: Tales from Alagaësia by Christopher Paolini (Knop, $16.99, 9781984894861) is a new story set in the world of Paolini's young adult fantasy Eragon.

A Velocity of Being: Letters to A Young Reader edited by Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick (Enchanted Lion Books, $34.95, 9781592702282) is a collection of love letters to books.

January 1:Life Admin: How I Learned to Do Less, Do Better, and Live More by Elizabeth F. Emens (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26, 9780544557239) gives tips for time management.

The Martha Manual: How to Do (Almost) Everything by Martha Stewart (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $35, 9781328927323) is a guide book for chores.

Under the Midnight Sun by Tracie Peterson and Kimberley Woodhouse (Bethany House Publishers, $22.99, 9780764219498) is book three in the Heart of Alaska series.

The Persecution of the Knights Templar: Scandal, Torture, Trial by Alain Demurger and Teresa Lavender Fagan (Pegasus, $27.95, 9781643130019) chronicles the downfall of the Knights Templar by French King Phillip IV.

Attainment: New Titles Out Soon

IndieBound: Other Indie Favorites

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:

HardcoverHearts of the Missing: A Mystery by Carol Potenza (Minotaur, $26.99, 9781250178282). "After being forced to move and give up law school, Nicky Matthews is finally doing something she really loves. She is a police sergeant with the Pueblo, New Mexico, police force and the liaison with the Fire-Skye Indian reservation. Nicky has made many friends on the res and is respected by the natives, but she is not liked at all by her boss, who can't wait to catch her doing something wrong. When a suicide seems to be linked to other missing Fire-Skye people, Nicky defies her boss and investigates. Ancient beliefs and culture, greed, revenge, and modern-day genetics all mix together in this beautifully written police procedural." --Nancy McFarlane, Fiction Addiction, Greenville, S.C.

Radiant Shimmering Light: A Novel by Sarah Selecky (Bloomsbury, $27, 9781635571806). "Is it really possible to use all of our devices and social media to create truly grounded, peaceful, meaningful lives? In Selecky's latest, 40-year-old pet artist Lillian is the one to find out! Incorporating every self-help, holistic, new-age approach there is, she reconnects with her long-lost cousin (and women's lifestyle guru) to live a life that is truly Instagram-worthy!" --Andrea Jones, The Galaxy Bookshop, Hardwick, Vt.

PaperbackThe Last Equation of Isaac Severy: A Novel in Clues by Nova Jacobs (Touchstone, $16, 9781501175138). "Isaac Severy has died and taken the secret of his last mathematical equation with him. Except that he has also hidden clues to a hiding place for this final work and shares these clues with his adopted granddaughter, Hazel, who he has charged with finding his hidden treasure and getting it into the hands of a trusted colleague. But she's not the only one looking for his equation, and some of the other searchers are dangerous indeed. This inviting mystery allows us to follow along as Hazel makes her way toward the answer, so be prepared to put on your thinking cap and get out your best clue-solving approach--you'll need all the help you can get. I absolutely loved this debut!" --Linda Bond, Auntie's Bookstore, Spokane, Wash.

For Ages 4 to 8Animalphabet by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Sharon King-Chai (Dial, $20.99, 9780525554158). "Practice maneuvering these flaps and showing off all the aspects of the gorgeous illustrations because Animalphabet would make a TREMENDOUS story time read!" --Tegan Tigani, Queen Anne Book Company, Seattle, Wash.

For Ages 9 to 12Henry & Eva and the Castle on the Cliff by Andrea Portes (HarperCollins, $16.99, 9780062560025). "An intelligently written story that will tickle your imagination, stretch your vocabulary, and exercise your mystery-solving muscles. A quirky sister and her analytical brother employ the help of ghostly ancestors to solve the mystery of their parents' untimely and tragic deaths. A delightfully Californian escape." --Kathy Blattman, The Well-Read Moose, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

For Teen ReadersPulp by Robin Talley (Harlequin Teen, $18.99, 9781335012906). "Following two queer teen girls through defining moments in their lives, Pulp navigates parallel stories connected by the characters' encounters with lesbian pulp novels of the 1950s. Robin Talley deftly shifts between the two stories, showing the challenges both girls face, from breakups and fighting parents to fear of being outed and facing the consequences of the Lavender Scare. Pulp is many things: a coming-of-age novel, a story of fighting for social change, and a reminder that finding yourself in the pages of a book can make you feel like you're not alone in the world." --Lelia Nebeker, One More Page Books, Arlington, Va.

For next week:

HardcoverThe Dakota Winters: A Novel by Tom Barbash (Ecco, $26.99, 9780062258199). "In The Dakota Winters, Barbash delivers a sweeping family saga that transports readers to the New York City of the late '70s and early '80s, to Central Park, the Village, the restaurant and club scenes, from the Beatles to the Flying Lizards to your average dysfunctional family living at the Dakota--the Winters. The story follows two conflicting arcs: that of fading father and late-night host Buddy Winter and that of his emerging 23-year-old son Anton. I loved Barbash's first novel, The Last Good Time, and The Dakota Winters does not disappoint. You'll want to savor every sentence of this powerful chronicle of the times!" --Bill Reilly, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.

The Adults: A Novel by Caroline Hulse (Random House, $26, 9780525511748). "What a fun read! Put a copy into the stocking of every adult family member (and rejoice when they all go off to their separate corners to read quietly). Exes, step-parents, vacation hijinks, secrets, and screw-ups--this funny novel has all the right ingredients to entertain and cut the tension surrounding big family holidays." --Mary Laura Philpott, Parnassus Books, Nashville, Tenn.

PaperbackThe Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose (Algonquin, $15.95, 9781616208523). "Fascinating fiction based on the true story of artist Marina Abramović's 2010 art performance in which she sat face-to-face, eye-to-eye, with museum visitors, one at a time, for 75 days. She sat unmoving, in the same pose every day, her expression unchanged except for occasional tears. The performance had surprisingly deep effects on both visitors who sat with her and visitors who simply observed. The story focuses on several fictional characters' almost-obsessive attraction to the performance and its subsequent influence on their lives. Not unlike the apparent enchantment of the performance, it was hard to tear my eyes from the page." --Kay Wosewick, Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, Wis.

For Ages 4 to 8Harold Loves His Woolly Hat by Vern Kousky (Schwartz & Wade, $17.99, 9781524764678)."This is a sweet story with even sweeter illustrations. Harold's beloved woolly hat is stolen by a crow who just won't give it back. But when Harold learns that his hat is being put to good use, as well as all the trinkets he's offered in trade, he's happy to have helped and realizes he doesn't need his hat to know that he's special. A great book that teaches that it's not what we have but what we do that matters." --Tildy Banker-Johnson, Belmont Books, Belmont, Mass.

For Ages 9 to 12: An Indies Introduce TitleSpeechless by Adam P. Schmitt (Candlewick, $16.99, 9781536200928). "Taking place over a 24-hour period, Speechless starts fast and never slows down. When Jimmy arrives at his cousin's wake, he learns he has to speak at the funeral the next day. You know, about the cousin who always made things harder, who was hard to get along with, who was downright mean at times. It's unusual to have a book about grief, especially conflicted grief, for this age group. Adam P. Schmitt has pulled it off--he's an author to watch." --Buffy Cummins, Second Star to the Right Children's Books, Denver, Colo.

For Teen ReadersKingdom of the Blazing Phoenix by Julie C. Dao (Philomel, $18.99, 9781524738327). "I LOVED the way folk tales were interwoven with the narrative in this worthy companion to Forest of a Thousand Lanterns. So much of this book is beautifully relevant to our world today. Lovely." --Rebecca Wells, Porter Square Books, Cambridge, Mass.

IndieBound: Other Indie Favorites

Book Review

Review: Black Is the Body

Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine by Emily Bernard
(Knopf, $25.95 hardcover, 240p., 9780451493026, January 29, 2019)

When she was a graduate student at Yale, Emily Bernard was one of seven victims of a random stabbing in a New Haven coffee shop. The attack was not racially motivated, but its effects--the enduring physical pain caused by her wound and the mental and emotional weight of the incident--have prompted Bernard to delve into the realities of her life as a black American woman. The essays in her third book, Black Is the Body, explore Bernard's experience as a black woman raised in Nashville who is now a long-time resident of Vermont. She explores what it means to be a mother of twin adopted daughters from Ethiopia, the wife of a white man and a thoughtful human being determined to get at the complicated truth of her identity.

After recounting the story of her stabbing, Bernard (Some of My Best Friends) moves on to "Teaching the N-Word," which reflects on the challenges of teaching African American literature to mostly white students at the University of Vermont. She appreciates her students' careful approach to racially charged terms, but pushes them to think beyond the words they so assiduously avoid saying. As with her students, so with her readers: Bernard's essays insist on critical thinking about the complexities of living in a black body. "It is in here and out there, my racial identity; it is something I have both lived and learned," she says. "My racial sense of self is made of rage and faith, pain and joy."

She recounts a road trip through the South with her parents and her then-fiancé, John; a series of fraught but loving conversations with her white friends; and the slow, layered process of making a home in New England, where she and her family stand out for several reasons. In all these places, although "being home does not necessarily mean being at peace," Bernard has found a home for herself in the familiar and sometimes paradoxical terrain of her own body.

Blackness, she argues, is an "art, not a science"; it is "a condition that encompasses beauty, misery, wonder, and opportunity." The essays in Black Is the Body contain all of the above. They are a brave, articulate rendering of one woman's experience, both particular and universal, and a vital addition to conversations about race and identity. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Shelf Talker: Emily Bernard's bold essays explore the paradoxes of living as a black woman in the U.S.